Becoming a nun in the Middle Ages
The latest book in my MEONBRIDGE CHRONICLES series, set in medieval England, is Sister Rosa’s Rebellion. In this novel, the storyline centres, not on Meonbridge – as the other novels do for the most part – but on a priory, to which a character in the first Chronicle, Fortune’s Wheel, departed under something of a cloud. That character was Johanna de Bohun, the daughter of the lord and lady of Meonbridge, Sir Richard and Lady Margaret. The shameful motivation behind Johanna’s decision to sequester herself in the priory as Sister Rosa is the primary thread in the story of Sister Rosa’s Rebellion. For when, after fifteen years of contentment, Rosa’s life in the priory is turned upside down, the reason she came to Northwick to become a nun is threatened to be revealed.
However, as I say, my character Sister Rosa had long been very happy with her cloistered life. She had chosen it and it suited her well. But that was not the case for some of her sisters, including the new prioress. And the possible reasons for discontent amongst some nuns in medieval nunneries is the subject of this post.
I’ve obtained my information for this story from Medieval English Nunneries, written in the 1920s by the medieval historian, Eileen Power. It’s through the records of the bishops’ visitations – the means by which all religious institutions were monitored and managed – that Power is able to tell us so much about the various difficulties of medieval nunneries.
One of those difficulties involved the very reason why the nuns were there. Had they entered the nunnery by choice, to pursue a religious life that they believed was their vocation? Or had they been sent there, possibly against their will?
Power makes it clear that at least some of the nuns in medieval nunneries were not there because they had chosen the life. Some were sent as children, others as young women. Power by no means claims that all of them were forced. She suggests that some – perhaps many, or even most? – professed (officially became a nun) happily enough, and might even have developed a vocation for the religious life. But it certainly wasn’t always the case. For those who entered the nunnery unwillingly or, at the very least, without actively consenting, one can imagine the life might have seemed like a form of incarceration.
To send your child to a nunnery was, I suppose, not necessarily done in order to “get rid of” them. The religious life might have been seen as a sanctuary, an honour, or an insurance for the family’s collective soul. But at least some of these youthful internees might have met their fate when devious relatives did want to be rid of them, in order to access their inheritance, for a nun had no claim on her father’s estate.
In other cases, a man with lots of children might send “superfluous” daughters to a nunnery for a lower dowry than he might need to find her a husband. (In fact, canon law forbade the giving of dowries to nunneries but they happened anyway, and indeed were commonplace.)
For some, a career as a nun might have seemed a natural “alternative” to marriage. Indeed, a girl might choose to take the veil willingly, not to say eagerly. She might see it as an honourable life for a girl who was unwilling or unable to marry, or indeed might have a real calling to the life. But, for those forced into the life, unwilling but unable to resist, perhaps out of fear or simply lack of agency, they might well have been miserable.
It is of course impossible to know how many were willing and how many not. But, from Power’s research, it would seem that the majority of nunneries were not full of desperately unhappy, antagonistic women, but were reasonably calm and contented places so, perhaps, regardless of the way they had entered their life, most nuns did learn to accept their fate and make the best of it. We shall never know.
So, why the nuns were there was one of the potential issues that might make, for some, their life a less than happy one. Another was the day-to-day life itself.
In the early days of nunneries, a nun’s day (aside from eating and sleeping) was marked by prescribed periods of prayer, some hours of work, and time allowed for reading and study. But Power tells us that, by the fourteenth century, reading was no longer widespread, and even work occupied less time than it once had, as servants tended to do it. As a result, says Power, “all nuns had was prayer”.
Obviously, those for whom the sequestered life was a vocation, for whom prayer was one of its most important, indeed joyous, aspects, would undoubtedly have relished spending most of their time in chapel. Moreover, even if reading and study had declined overall, nuns with a vocation would surely read and study anyway, so most of their time would be usefully, and happily, occupied.
But for those who had no vocation, the lack of occupation could have rendered their lives as tedium without relief. A dearth of meaningful activity also encouraged some to try and brighten their lives a little, with more colourful clothes, pet dogs and forms of entertainment. It is evident that bishops did attempt to curb these “brighteners”, on the grounds that the nuns weren’t observing the requisite life of simplicity and abstinence, which suggest it was a problem, though how widespread it’s impossible to know.
However, frivolity was one level of failing. How much worse when nuns broke the bounds of morality!
In principle, a nun’s life was “cloistered”: she didn’t leave the confines of the nunnery for any reason. Yet, it seems nuns made all sorts of excuses for escape, and again, that bishops tried to curtail them implies that such getaways were commonplace enough. Some of the “excuses” were probably legitimate enough, especially if they involved visits to a nun’s secular family, but it’s clear too that sometimes nuns took advantage of, say, a weak-willed or incompetent prioress, and ended up visiting ‘improper” places, like monasteries, men’s private houses, or taverns. The latter seems somewhat unlikely but perhaps it has some truth! Anyway, as Power says, for hundreds of years, the bishops were mostly unsuccessful in forcing nuns to stay “cloistered”, and in the end, of course, the nunneries (like the monasteries) were dissolved, with the excessive freedom to “get away” cited as one of the principal reasons.
The authorities’ insistence upon sequestration was, of course, their desire to keep nuns away from men (and vice versa). Chastity was one of a nun’s vows, and (it was presumed) the only way of preventing nature taking its course was to keep her locked up. Nonetheless, she might come across men inside the nunnery: illicit liaisons with priests were certainly recorded in the visitation reports. Moreover, some of the in-house servants might be men, and if a nun engaged in any outdoor work, she might have occasional contact with farm workers. So, opportunities were probably always available for those who wished to find them…
Power concludes that the majority of nunneries were almost certainly perfectly moral, and didn’t have their nuns gallivanting around the countryside or getting themselves into inappropriate liaisons. However, the records of the bishops’ visitations reveal that immoral, even outrageous, behaviour, did occur, some of which led to the inevitable unwanted consequences.
Occasionally, it was the prioress herself who set a bad example. There appear to be a very few examples of prioresses, or even abbesses, who bore several children and even brought them up in the nunnery, which sounds extraordinary. Sometimes it was a nun who got into trouble, and sometimes she left the nunnery – apostatised – perhaps to set up home with her child’s father. Yet it wouldn’t have been a happy answer to her problem, for she risked being excommunicated. Often it seems, the apostate returned to the nunnery and had to undergo arduous penances in order to recover her hallowed status.
However, as I’ve written in my Author’s Note, this picture of a medieval nunnery should not be taken as the norm! I suspect that most of the 140 or so nunneries in Medieval England were probably reasonably tranquil and pious, their nuns working hard to make ends meet as best they could. But, as Eileen Power writes, the evidence from the bishops’ visitations does suggest there were examples where nuns were discontented and caused trouble of one sort or another.
In truth, I feel it’s perhaps surprising that more nuns didn’t succumb to misbehaviour, given the circumstances in which some of them had entered their cloistered life, and the restrictions under which they had to live. Especially when you realise that nearly all nuns came from the gentry and nobility, and might have expected their future lives to be comfortable not constrained!
